This is an awesome project! What schools are the LEAP scholars from, and what are they generally majoring in?

All the students are undergraduates in science majors at Arizona State University who have transferred from community colleges. Most are majoring in biology.

Thanks for sharing with us!  Can you describe a bit about what you teach in the Learning about Research course and do you have some materials to share with those interested in developing such courses at their institutions? thanks much.

Most of the students come into this program knowing very little about what research is and how they could maximize their experience doing research.  So we try to unveil the "unwritten rules" associated with undergraduate research.  We originally thought about just teaching this to the students, but we quickly realized that we didn't want to just talk at the students.  So we took an approach where the students learned about undergraduate research by doing an education research project on undergraduate research.  These types of classes are often called course-based undergraduate research experiences (here is a link to a description of these types of courses: http://www.asmscience.org/content/journal/jmbe/10.1128/jmbe.v19i2.1567.  In this course, the students dug into the primary literature on undergraduate research - on what makes good mentoring, on what benefits students report from participating in undergraduate research, on the different types of undergraduate research experiences.  They discovered that very little had been published on the negative aspects of undergraduate research, so they decided to do a research project on why undergraduates leave undergraduate research experiences.  They designed the research question, collected data, analyzed the data, and we just submitted a manuscript with all the students as co-authors!  And they learned a ton about undergraduate research at the same time - which they are applying as they work in scientific research labs!

Great work. How have the students dealt with the challenge of fitting in research to their schedules? Do the transfer students have a higher number of courses to complete in a shorter amount of time?

There is such a critical need in cultivating the STEM talent potential of transfer of students. And as you pointed out, exposure to research is an important part of realizing this potential in our future STEM leaders. Your program that includes not just the research exposure, but also the peer-mentorship piece is particularly powerful. Will you share your journal article once published? And I love that you included all the scholars as co-authors. What a wonderful way to continue to build the community of scholars within the program and beyond. We invite the LEAP scholars to submit thier poster abstracts for the 2019 LSMRCE conference which will be held October 25-27, in Indianapolis. This is a competitive poster session and travel awards are available. https://lsmrce.org Hope to see more about your publication!

How did the project decide who/what was 'high-achieving'? Given the student's lack of opportunity in the past, I wonder how their high-achievement might differ from traditional ways we consider high-achievement. 

As an instructor in an AA transfer program, thank you for looking out for our transfer students!  I'm always a little worried that they won't find the community they need when they get to the "big university".

Most of the STEM students we have are really not interested in STEM as a career, rather they are majoring in science in order to apply for medical, dental, pharmacy school, etc.  My question is this:  Are your transfer students also primarily interested in professional schools as well?  Professional schools already have a lot of applicants and I am curious if this approach increases the number of nonprofessional school STEM graduates.

Thanks for your video and your work.  Holly

We admit students into the program regardless of what their career interests are.  Some of our students want to go to medical school or dental school and others want to go on to graduate school in science.  Undergraduate research experiences can be beneficial for students regardless of whether they want to go on and do research, so we try to help students see the benefits.  Some of our students had no idea that they like research before they did the program and now are considering careers doing research!

Thanks for sharing your work! I'd love to hear more about the impact of the LEAP program. What are you seeing has changed about students after their 4 semesters? Do you measure any impact formally?

I appreciate hearing about Community College to degree completion success stories particularly for underrepresented populations. Seeing your success rate in inspiring. Do you have plans for dissemination of this program to additional Community Colleges and Universities?

wow..such an impressive project.  Thanks for sharing.

Could you share more about the peer-to-peer mentor relationship within the program? Are there formal activities? What impact does the mentor relationship have on the mentors? on the mentees? Thanks!

Sure!  Our LEAP Scholars who have been in the program for a year serve as mentors to our incoming LEAP Scholars each year.  The students have class together once a week throughout the entire semester.  The senior LEAP students mentor the incoming students with regard to how to navigate college, science education research, and how to be successful in their basic science research labs.  We haven't formally measured the impact of mentorship on the students.  However, we have noticed that our students who have had the opportunity to be mentored are extremely resourceful (e.g. apply to many REU programs, apply for scholarships, etc..), which I think is a direct result of being mentored by the senior students. 

Interesting project!!! Thanks for sharing!!!